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Archive | July 2014

It’s Throwback Thursday. I can’t post many pictures, because they were stolen a few years ago. I can throw back a blog post though. Enjoy:

Last night while my husband and son were at boy scouts, my girls and I cuddled up on the couch to watch Sarah’s Choice. (I knew the content before hand and I was okay with my girls, ranging in age from 6 – 18 seeing it)

It was a great opportunity to talk about unplanned pregnancy, choices, decisions, and the rest of your life. I have often told each of my kids “Sometimes you have to give up something to do what is right” and this movie was a great example of that.

In the movie, two friends are astounded that a co-worker would go to college for 4 years, get a great job, receive a promotion and then give it all up when she had a baby. “What a waste!” they said. My girls said “That’s not a waste! It’s a baby and a baby is a great gift”. (smile, mom!)

Then Taylor said “that’s what Auntie Heather did. She gave up her job to stay home with her boys. It’s not a waste”.

I looked at her and said “honey, do you remember that I quit my job to stay home with all of you kids?”. She shook her head no.

The fact that she couldn’t remember made me smile. Before Piper was born, I had a great job. I had both Jack and Taylor while working there, and returned to work each time, broken hearted, but determined not to give up what I had worked for. I was able to make my own schedule, for the most part, was earning $20 an hour, had great benefits. I had started on the production floor and worked my way up to an assistant/ clerk in the finance department.

I thought “this is what my kids will always remember. They will never know a stay at home mom. It’s too late for me to change it. It’s impossible anyway.”

After Piper was born though, I couldn’t return. I could not go back. The thought of it made me physically ill. I didn’t have a clue how we would make it, I only knew that we had to.

So I gave it all up. I have never looked back. I thought for sure that my kids would remember those stressful years.

Last night showed me that it’s never too late and my kids only remember me as the mom who has stayed home with them.

What a gift her lack of memory was for me.

It’s never too late to change. It’s never too late to do what is right.

And it’s horrible. It’s terrifying. It’s scary to think that this could happen to anyone. Many people think they are “safe”. It could never happen to them, but who in their right mind would think it could? Even if you know and understand that it could happen in your life, you probably don’t believe it will. Hopefully it never does.

These news stories break my heart. I can’t imagine how a parent lives with the knowledge every day that their actions led to the death of their child. Especially when it’s completely unintentional. People who comment on such news articles appear to have no grace. “Poor parenting”, “they should have never had kids”, “This will never happen to me, I’m a REAL parent!”, etc, etc, etc. For a parent who truly forgot, who is probably beating themselves up and wanting to change the past, these comments likely dig deep and stab hard. I can’t imagine.

Yet, I can. I have been there. Let me give you a glimpse of a status I posted on Facebook last night:

Confession, because I hate it when people say it would never happen to them, and yet it happened to me. I left Piper in the car once. She was forward facing, in the seat behind me and I left her. It was hot out. There had been some confusion about whether she was coming with me or staying with Chad. I was distracted. I got out of the van, locked it and started walking away. I am so dang thankful that my mom and Taylor were with me. My mom said “aren’t you going to get the baby?” I looked at her confused and said “what baby?”, then I remembered that she was with us. I will never forget that happening. I think of it EVERY time I drive somewhere.

It can happen to anybody, given the right set of bad circumstances. I clearly remember the details of that day. I’m thankful it was momentary, but it happened. I forgot.

Some people will think it can never happen to them and that I am an idiot. That’s okay. I know I’m not. I’m just human. I’m not super human and I make mistakes.

You know what happened? Friends stopped by and commented and said “This happened to me too”. They shared their stories. Many shared how the memory haunts them. They know, as I do, that the outcome could have been much, much different. Every one of us is thankful that it wasn’t. Each of us understands that this isn’t something that only happens to horrible parents. Oh, sure, there are some parents out there that leave a lot to be desired, but that is not our downfall.

Our downfall is that we are human. We have things on our minds, we are busy, over worked, over scheduled and distracted. We have new routines that throw everything in our day off. I will never NOT regret that this happened to me. Our situation did not end terribly, but it still happened and I still remember. (Unfortunately, Piper, who has heard this story many times won’t forget either. I get a “Don’t leave me like that one time!” all the time)

Look, I’m not proud of myself. Not in the least. This shouldn’t happen. Unfortunately it does. It happens more than it should. I can understand how and why though and my heart mourns for the parents who were much like me and just had a different outcome. It’s something that can’t be taken back and when a parent is already grieving, they don’t need to be blamed. They need compassion. Understanding. Solidarity. They need to know that it could happen to anyone.

In the late 1940’s, Percy Spencer was experimenting with a new vacuum tube called a magnetron while doing research for Raytheon Corporation. Out of this experiment came a household appliance that many kitchens sport.

The microwave.

The microwave does for us in minutes what takes more minutes to do on a stove top or in the oven. It nukes our food and our liquids. It cooks. It reheats. It thaws. With a microwave, last minute meals are not a big deal. Forgot to take the ground beef out to thaw? No problem! It used to take all day in the refrigerator, but with the microwave you can have that done in less than 10 minutes. This is especially useful if you are terrible at planning ahead.

Microwaves have not only removed the need to plan ahead, they have removed the need to wait. There is no need for patience. Health risks of using a microwave aside, this is not entirely a bad thing.

However

Yes, however….

Our need for fast meals seems to be spilling over into other areas of our lives. We are living in a society of people who do not like to wait. We don’t want to wait for dinner, so we have microwaves, fast food and drive throughs. If we go to a sit down restaurant, chances are someone is irritated because the service is a little slow. (as a side note, I was in a restaurant a few months ago with the following sign: If you want a fast meal, we will gladly give you directions to McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, etc. If you want a good meal, be patient) We don’t want to wait for marriage for sex. Why should we? We can do it now. We don’t want to wait in line at the bank. (another side note: you don’t have to wait. There’s an app for that) We want to know the sex of our babies, NOW. There’s no waiting!

Slowly, we have become Veruca Salt, from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. “I want a ____________ and I want it now!”

How terribly sad.

I fall into the trap of a microwave society. I found out the sex of 3 of our 4 babies before they were born. I use the microwave a little too much, I plan for things a little too little. I had sex before marriage. I hate to wait!

Society lies. It tells you that you don’t need to wait because you can have it now. When I was pregnant with my 4th baby, we decided that we would wait until she was born to find out if she was a boy or a girl. I will never forget hearing “It’s a girl!” when she was born. Many people tell me that it’s exciting to hear it at 20 weeks pregnant too. I don’t disagree, but until you have waited nine months to hear it, you just don’t know how much sweeter it is.

Our food is better…. when we wait. Our memories are better… when we wait.

I know that many will disagree with me. That’s okay. If we all agreed with each other, life would be SO boring. 🙂 As for me…. my ground beef is thawing in the fridge.

I had heard about Plan to Eat, but I resisted signing up. I already planned my meals, for the most part. I did well, mostly, eating dinner at home every night. In short, I just didn’t think I needed it.

Then several months ago, I was listening to the radio and the deejay was talking about Plan to Eat. She said that it was so easy to make a menu and a list. She said it took her less than 5 minutes to plan her meals. Then she said that there was a free 30 day trial.

30 Days? FREE? If you know me, you know I can not resist free.

So I signed up.

It was perfect timing too, because just a week after signing up, we were headed out for our first family vacation in 11 years! We had rented a house and had full access to a kitchen, stove, refrigerator, plate and silverware. Meaning…. we weren’t eating out. We really had no excuse. 😉

So I jumped right in with planning the week’s meals. The first time I used Plan to Eat, I could see why so many loved the service. One… it was easy. Two… it was convenient. Three… they had some preloaded recipes that you could use.

1. It was easy: So easy. There is a button that you can place on your tool bar. When you are on a website with a recipe and want to save it to your Plan to Eat account, you push the button and it (usually) loads and saves the recipe! (I say usually, because sometimes the set up of the web site means you have to copy and paste instead of one clicking it, but even this is easy) You can also copy the link, go to your account and save the recipe that way.

2. It’s convenient: You just click your recipe and drag it to your menu planner. Then you click your shopping list button and voila! An automatic grocery list! It will import everything into the list, even salt and pepper, so if you’re like me and you just happen to have that, you can delete it from your list.

3. Pre-loaded recipes: Not only do they have recipes already pre-loaded, if you have a friend who is using Plan to Eat, you can browse any of THEIR public recipes. (there is an option to keep your recipe private) I found some great recipes that are now family favorites, because Not a Stepford Life (Link is to her Plan to Eat Review) also joined and she had some yummy recipes on her account.

30 days after signing up for the free trial, I had no reservations about spending the $39 for a full year’s access to Plan to Eat. I could see how Plan to Eat not only saved time, but money as well. In March, the month before signing up for Plan to Eat, we spent $600 on groceries. This is food alone. In April, our first month of using Plan to Eat, we spent $460. This amount included our vacation food! As you can see, I saved well over the $39 fee.

I highly recommend Plan to Eat. If you join, let me know and we can swap recipes. We’ve been eating new recipes every week, so I have many saved! If you are interested, you can find Plan to Eat here.